A Dock Labourer in the 1880’s
George Green describes the experiences of his grandfather, a typical Liverpool docker’s life of the late nineteenth century.
My great-grandfather, John Green, was born in the Liverpool area in 1836, son of a rope-maker and twine-spinner. His parents were married in 1810 at Ormskirk, near Liverpool, and John was the middle child of a large number of offspring. By 1900 he was the eldest surviving son.
Stories within the family suggest he had ‘ideas above his station’; and he is reputed to have stayed up late as a youth, studying by the glow of coals from the kitchen range. This was at the risk of a belting from his father, who was illiterate.
John certainly had wanderlust; and in 1861 when he married at Kirkdale, Liverpool, his ‘rank or profession’ is given as ship steward. In any event, settled married life did not suit him; and, when his first and only child was six months old, he left the country and his family behind to go to India.
He was not to return for nineteen years; and the only information I have yet discovered about this period of his life is a family tradition that he had ‘something to do’ with the Calcutta Times. After his return to Merseyside, probably in 1881, he lived in Birkenhead, doing various manual and semi-skilled jobs connected with the docks.
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